Nice. You should post benchmarks comparing the player's return to that of some well-defined AI's, like one which is always an optimist, one that's contrarian, and one that's a monkey throwing darts.

It would be a real eye-opener to those who do worse than the monkey.

It seems the data is from the last four years...you'd be safe to just buy.

Pretty fun, but not very realistic in the sense that the trade is taken exactly after 10 or 20 days. You don't allow setting stop losses, etc.

Chartarcade.com is a really good stock simulator. It's been around for a while, also uses real stock data, and allows you to buy and sell while incrementing on a per-day or per-week basis. It's actually a really good tool for learning how to buy and sell stocks on a swing basis.

Thanks for the link - that's a very polished tool. My advanced mode lets you step through day-by-day in a similar manner.

Its seems like a really cool idea. I have one question: Where do you get all the previous financial data? You scrape from the financial sites?

-- Shameless plug: There is a site I recently built which is kinda related. (I just finished it last week. Still doing some testing, but would like to gather some feedback) Its called QuantHunt (http://www.quanthunt.com/) Basically you write a forex trading bot using a simple API and your progress is tracked in a leaderboard. Real world ticker data is used for the prices.

[Invitation code for registration:qKMqNj]

The historical data was free from finance.yahoo.com. I'll check out your link, thanks!

Technical analysis chart looks cool, i.e. like a real one.

What lib did you use for charting?

Excellent idea - shall indulge some folks, if you go the app way. Better kill time with this than some MonsterCatJumpingDrawing app...

Charting library is Telerik (http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-ajax/chart.aspx) - expensive but powerful. Thanks for the kind words.

You are welcome :-)

What are your plans with it?

After getting 10 wrong in a row, I've decided to start buying more mutual funds.

Are you crazy?! You have a money-making machine there: just do the opposite of what you'd normally do!

This is known as the Costanza Method of trading.

I just tried this. It's frightening how well this actually worked.

I'd be interested in getting my hands on the data generated by this app. It would useful in building a stock prediction AI.

Are you serious about that? If so contact me.

This is a re-launch of a web app I made a few years ago. I'm operating on the freemium model: pay a small one-time fee for access to premium features such as trade position size and price/volume indicators. Feedback needed, thanks!

The chart images are broken for me. Also, when I click buy/sell, nothing seems to happen. But when I refresh the page, I seem to have made money!

Seems like a fun an addicting idea though.

Hmm I've gotten a few errors come through with a blank user agent, perhaps that's it? What browser are you on?

Chrome 19 on Windows 7. I shouldn't have a blank user agent, I wouldn't think.

I'm getting the same issue. Also on Win7 using IE9 or FF12

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_DOUBLE_ARROW in C:\wamp\www\fakemoneyrealstocks.com\register_popup_complete.php on line 5

Whoops, fixed!

Sam,

you got some cool stuff under your belt [this and prior projects].

You definitely need to make smth out of it!

Is it really unthinkable to trade for more than 20 days?

Does anyone play long-term in this game?

How far back does your data go?

I have data for all US stocks since 2000. At this point I limit the web app to the past few years or so, and only for S&P 100 stocks. I'll eventually open up more data for the premium users.

I've just made $2,180,000.0 :) (169 trades). Simple, nice idea. Congrats!

I never recovered from trade one. You should quit your day job. ;-)

I also got to almost $2 million after a couple hundred trades, but then just started pushing buy every time and went back down to $100k. I helped my dad get up $40k on etrade in the 4 months just before 9/11, pleaded with him to collect his winnings in August, and then it all trickled away in the weeks afterwards. Stock trading is just a casino where the odds are 2% in your favor each day, but only the rich can play. I think hackers make good traders because of their contrarian nature, and ability to stay cool and read signs that most people are too impatient/impulsive to see.

A simple guide to how to read the graphs for a noob like me?

Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Based-Technical-Analysis-Scie...

Bottom line (but very controversial among any diverse group of investors): it doesn't work. I always try to steer people away from it if - it's one of those big choices in life (like choosing a good wife or husband) that can have a major impact a few decennia down the line.

The art of reading stock charts is called technical analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis). It's disputed whether it works or not, but it's fun to try!

If you're getting your data free from Yahoo (scraping or API), aren't you limited by their non-commercial use clauses? That is, if you try to make money off of it without buying the data, doesn't that open you up to a huge liability risk?

Pretty sure that's stipulated all throughout their service (that you may not use any of their data for commercial purposes without their permission).

Acquiring that kind of data for commercial purposes normally costs a lot of money (relatively speaking).

Tried to throw you $10 there bub, but I after I clicked the "paypal" round button to buy, It sent me here:

"https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSI...

And I got:

FakeMoneyRealStocks.com Return to FakeMoneyRealStocks.com Error Message

This recipient is currently unable to receive money.

Return to FakeMoneyRealStocks.com PayPal

At this time, we are unable to process your request. Please return to FakeMoneyRealStocks.com and try another option.

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Thanks for trying. Paypal shut me down because they think I'm a financial services provider and are asking for all my professional membership licenses :(

Ssssh: If you click the paypal button now, I've redirected it to upgrade you for free!

Neat idea, it worked perfectly on the samsung galaxy s2 with android. I did a bunch of trades and lost money on most and got up to the screen to hit the user with the "pay me or go away" screen. On that screen, clicking "close" link makes the entire frame popup blink once, indicating failed click and no action taken.

Reloading the page brought me back to the main screen for 14 more trades.

Clicked buy now to see if that worked, pondered throwing you the 10 bucks. Paypal says: This recipient is currently unable to receive money.

Thanks for trying. Paypal shut me down because they think I'm a financial services provider and are asking for all my professional membership licenses :(

Ssssh: If you click the paypal button now, I've redirected it to upgrade you for free!

I haven't tried this on my Galaxy Nexus so I'm surprised that it worked as well as it did on your phone.